Safeway

Type:Public(
Founded: 1915 (American Falls, Idaho)
Headquarters: Pleasanton, California
Key people: Steven Burd, CEO & Chairman
Industry: Retail (Grocery)
Products: Bakery, dairy, deli, Dry Cleaning, frozen foods, general grocery, meat, pharmacy, Photo Dept., produce, seafood, snacks, liquor, flowers, Western Union and lottery
Website: www.safeway.com

General Information

Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY), a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain, with over 1750 stores located throughout the western and central United States and Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, California. Supermarket News ranked Safeway No. 4 in the 2007 'Top 75 North American Food Retailers' based on 2006 fiscal year estimated sales of $40.5 billion. Based on 2005 revenue, Safeway is the tenth-largest retailer in the United States.

FOunding and Merger

The Safeway chain was created in a merger engineered by Merrill Lynch in 1926 of Skaggs Stores and Sam Seelig Company. The name 'Safeway' was created at that time for the stores and group.

Skaggs Stores had its start in 1915, when Marion B. Skaggs purchased his father's grocery store in American Falls, Idaho, for $1,089. The chain, which traded under the name Skaggs' Cash Stores grew quickly, and Skaggs enlisted the help of his five brothers to help grow the network of stores which reached 191 by 1920.

Sam Seelig Co. was founded in Los Angeles in the 1920s.

By the time of the merger in 1926, Seelig Stores had 322 stores centered in Southern California, while Skaggs had grown to 673 stores centered in the Pacific Northwest region. The merger was orchestrated by Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch, who later left Merrill Lynch, for a period of time, to run Safeway in the 1930s. At the time of the merger, the company was headquartered in Reno, Nevada. But in 1929, Safeway relocated its headquarters to a former grocery warehouse in Oakland, California.